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South Hills Community News Release
ALTOONA, PA — South Hills School of Business & Technology’s Altoona Campus hosted an International Information System Security Certification Consortium, or (ISC)², Pennsylvania Highlands Local Chapter event on February 5, 2020. (ISC)² is a non-profit organization known as the "world's largest IT security organization" which specializes in training and certifications for cybersecurity professionals. The most widely known certification offered by (ISC)² is the Certified Information Systems Security Professional certification.
At the event, South Hills students and other guests participated in a number of activities and spent the day networking with other members of the local computer security community. Everyone came together for a presentation on the current state of ransomware given by Steven Bish, a senior cybersecurity analyst from Schneider Downs.
Attendees were then permitted to give lock picking a try using various tools. Physical lock picking aims to get participants to start thinking like a computer hacker. Cybersecurity experts and lock picking enthusiasts believe that getting people to figure out how to break through a physical lock helps prepare them to figure out how hackers break through virtual ones. Ultimately, the goal of the lock picking exercise is to teach participants to think differently to help better identify vulnerabilities in computer systems so they can patch any flaws and improve overall network security.
Afterwards, attendees explored various computer security devices and pentesting tools. Pentesting is short for “penetration testing”, which is a form of ethical hacking. Pentesting focuses on testing the security of a specifically defined area and helps determine whether a computer system is vulnerable to a cyber attack, whether the defensive measures already in place are sufficient, and which, if any, of those security measures failed any of the tests.
The goal of (ISC)² events like these is to help advance cyber, information, software, and infrastructure security professionals by arming them with the knowledge, tools, and expertise to protect their organizations' networks.
